Gary and I went to a BELLYDANCE EXTRAVAGANZA last night, staged by my teacher, Anahid Sofian:

Her special guests were these two divas:



Eva Cernik



Nourhan Sharif

YOWZA!

sick… swollen glands, weird dry feeling at back of throat… congestion… wah…

staying home eating ice cream… watching a Mehboob Khan movie — yeah!

October 13, 1977

On Nightclub Women

or

October Saintliness

Cry, forsooth! and cry to synthesize

         Sorrow of aracara birds

                   Winging their names through

                             Fashion on 4th

         Red chiffon clings to ghostly thighs

                  Tall Dancing,

                             Bouncing on the three

fiery teeth flashing exuberantly

         of sophisticated drugs

                   Painfulness in the scarlett

I am not like these women,

                   But saintly,

                             small.

September Fairfax

September 17, 1977

And it is raining again, the warm rain.

I want to be wrapped in the satin arms of humans,

Wrapped in the silent arms of warm rains

Sarin coverlets

The affinity of moisture and the warmth

Of the rains, of the strong-armed rains

I am warm and raining affinity —

comfortable in the human knowledge of the greening

The satin greens of chickweed after rains.

The banishment of drought

The coming of winter — inside rainy winter —

White-star flowers of chickweed remind me of

The museum in wintertime, stuffed, drought-stricken

Dry, dried-up reatures

Juxtaposing the wet, satin green aquarium,

Alive with rains.